API-led digital transformation – Digital Transformation with IBM API Connect
By Isabella Morgan / September 11, 2023 / No Comments / IBM and Microsoft Exams, OneDrive for Business, Technical requirements
Digital transformation and digital modernization are both common in business discussions and literature and are often being morphed into a marketing drumbeat. What does this mean? Is it just the latest buzzword? How does it fit into the project you are just starting or have been asked to architect a solution for? As an architect, project/product manager, or developer, having a good idea of what your end goal is and how you are participating in the eventual vision should be important.
API-led digital transformation is how you achieve connectivity to support your digital transformation, but before we dive deeper into the hows and whys, it’s important to look at, historically, the business reasons that make this endeavor important.
A journey back in time
To gain a better grasp of the benefits of digital transformation, let’s take a journey back in time. Imagine that you owned a family business where you make blankets. Like any business, you required the necessary raw materials (cotton or wool) to perform the painstaking weaving to produce your product. You had to reflect that in the price. Too high and it wouldn’t sell, too low and you ran out of goods and it took you considerable time to create them. You hung your shingle outside to advertise your craft so townspeople would walk to your place of business and inquire about your goods.
Being a crafty business person, you also tried to create as many blankets as possible and have them transported to other towns or ships to sell on street markets or to other stores. Every evening you would sit down and review your books to count your sales, determine how many blankets you could complete, ensure you had enough raw materials to create the blankets, and write letters to other business owners to see if they would like to buy some of your blankets. You often wondered that if you had a storefront in the town square, whether that would increase your sales. In the 18th century, digits referred to fingers and toes, which you perhaps used to count your sales!
Luckily for you, you were living in the 18th century and it was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was a period of innovation that transformed largely rural, agricultural societies in Europe and America into industrialized, more urban societies:

Figure 1.1 – Textiles of the Industrial Revolution, by Illustrator T. Allom – History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain by Sir Edward Baines. Public domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9430141
It was a time where inventions/technologies that were adopted by businesses provided improved business efficiencies/values and changed people’s expectations on the availability of goods.
You found that by purchasing a Spinning Jenny, which made weaving faster, you saw work shift from family-led home production to factory production. Later, you were able to buy faster weaving equipment that ran on steam power and your output increased drastically.
Of course, this changed how you thought about your business. You had greater productivity and you needed to transport your product more efficiently. Horse and cart wouldn’t be as effective as a locomotive, so you started shipping by train. Being the only blanket maker in town, you increased your storage space and people from all over flocked to your store. Given you were more efficient in making your blankets, you were able to garner better deals for increased raw materials and passed that on to consumers at lower costs. You even hired an accountant to keep track of your books (because you ran out of digits). You were a success and ahead of your time.